Japanese Animation & Visual culture

Sasuga no Sarutobi, Yoshiji Kigami and Hiroshi Fukutomi

I’ve been watching ‘Sasuga no Sarutobi’ (also called ‘The Academy of Ninjas’) up to episode 20 over the last few weeks, an 80s ninja/martial arts comedy that feels a lot like Ranma 1/2 if you ask me. It’s been quite a fun show so far (despite somewhat clichéd story and characters), which stems from the fact that the show really delivers on the animation side of things. It’s not a coincidence that this anime is frequently treated as a classic example of an 80s TV ‘sakuga anime’ after all. Besides the fact that they used an extraordinary number of drawings for each episode (6000-8000 animation frames per episode, so more than twice of a typical TV anime at the time), it’s particularly the animators and directors who used that luxury to do all kinds of interesting things. Studios like Kaname Production (best known for producing ‘Birth’), Anime R and Animaruya worked on the series as subcontractors, and those studios were usually the ones which did the most interesting episodes from an animation perspective. As for individual animators, the two people who renownedly stood out here were Masayuki and Yoshiji Kigami. In Kigami’s case, his animation on ‘Sasuga no Sarutobi’ is probably the work he’s best known for in the anime industry even to this day. When Kigami is mentioned by people within the industry, it’s usually in relation to ‘Sasuga no Sarutobi’, like in this Toshiyuki Inoue x Hiroyuki Imaishi x Yuichiro Oguro discussion. And Hiroyuki Kitakubo seems to associate Kigami primarily with ‘Sasuga no Sarutobi’, too.

Still being a member of Animaruya (a studio founded by 7 Shin-Ei Doga people such as Hiroshi Fukutomi and Toshiyuki Honda) at the time, Kigami was involved in the episodes outsourced to said studio. That is, episode 2, 8, 15, 16, 21 and 28. While the animation in episode 2 and 8 is very nice, I think the best ones to check out Kigami’s work on this series are 15 and 16 (haven’t watched 21 and 28 yet, though). Episode 15 and 16 were storyboarded by Hiroshi Fukutomi, and boy, the directing is really fun and playful here. I especially liked the scene on the veranda at the beginning of episode 15 where Fukutomi’s storyboarding and Kigami’s rich animation complement each other amazingly well. Fukutomi’s storyboarding includes a lot of rather difficult shots, so he certainly depended on skillful animators like Kigami who could animate such challenging cuts. One characteristic trait of Fukutomi’s directing is moving the camera a lot, and he particularly likes camera rotations. In this interviewFukutomi said that this tendency possibly came from the influence of live-action movie director Daisuke Ito, who is known for a very mobile camera style. Here are two openings directed by Fukutomi which demonstrate his approach pretty well:

The first one, the ‘Kaibutsu-kun’ opening, has the kind of storyboard that might be fun to draw for a director, but which is certainly something like hell for animators. The second one, the ‘Highschool! Kimengumi’ opening, is more reserved regarding background animation and camera moves, but I think it’s pretty well done. There’s no credit for opening animation so it’s not clear who animated it, but it’s been rumored that Yoshiji Kigami might have done the key animation. Kigami also worked on the show itself (he storyboarded episode 20), which was at the very beginning of his career as director. Interestingly, Yamakanrecently mentioned that ‘Highschool! Kimengumi’ was his mentor’s (i.e. Kigami’s) directorial (or rather storyboarding) debut work, but I think (if the information on Sakuga@wiki isn’t wrong) Kigami had already done the storyboard of Galactic Patrol Lensman #5 some time before that. Either way, Kigami was very close to Fukutomi during his time at Animaruya. The peak was certainly the OVA ‘Shin Dosei Jidai: Hawaiian Breeze‘ where Fukutomi directed and Kigami was the animation director (there’s no character designer credited, so I guess Kigami did the designs, too). Unfortunately, I’ve never had the chance to watch it since the OVA is pretty rare.

His period at Animaruya and working under Fukutomi certainly shaped Kigami’s own style a lot, and consequently it’s also visible in KyoAni’s work up to today. It’s especially apparent in the episodes directed by Kigami himself, of course. And I think it’s no coincidence that Kigami handled Nichijou #6, which includes the chapter where the principal is wrestling with a deer. In the past, Animaruya was a studio of pro wrestling fans and they even had a training area within the studio with all kinds of body-building equipment back in the day. So I can imagine that Kigami specifically wanted to direct this episode. And in Nichijou #6, you can also find this shot:

If you’re familiar with most of KyoAni’s works, you might notice that they like to use camera rotations or at least more demanding camera work now and then, which I think could be a remnant of Kigami’s long interaction with Hiroshi Fukutomi in the past. I mean, Kigami was the one who animated a lot of Fukutomi’s challenging camera work, so it certainly left a mark on him. Some examples from KyoAni’s anime:

Other examples can be found in Kanon 2006 #19 or in the Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū game openings.